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Friday, February 8, 2013

God's Love: Is it Enough?

God love produces love. Valentine's Promotion extended:

Each order until Feb. 28th receives 3 mini muralette hearts free

( one 3 inch, one 2 inch, and one 1 inch).

God's Love: Is It Enough?

Deuteronomy 6:5 commands
us that we should "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of
your soul, and all of your might." Jesus reiterated this as the greatest
commandment, and also affirmed that the second greatest was to "love your
neighbor as yourself." What amazing commands! God's law can be sifted
down to "love." But so much of the time we think that, or at least
act like, God's Law consists merely of lists of dos and don'ts. God commands
our heart first. And yet as soon as we think of this, most of us, if we dare to
be honest with ourselves, will have to admit that we fall very short of even
these two simple commands.

Is the answer to just try
harder? Does the shame and guilt that we feel cause us to just work more at it?
Do we try to say to ourselves, we need to stop something that is keeping
us from this or start doing something better? Is that where we stop? We
can work hard and let guilt pile on us until we finally despair of our own
inability. Sure, we may do well for a little while, until our other desires
get in the way. Ultimately, it is not what we do that is the most important, it
is what or rather, who we love. Love is key.

Our love is lacking. So,
do we say...Oh, I need to work harder on loving then? Well, maybe. But in most
of the Scriptures which command love for God and each other, there are declarations
before the commands. Deuteronomy 6:1 God says, "I am the Lord your God who
brought you out of the land of Egypt." He declared His loving care for
them first. The same pattern appears in the New Testament. In Colossians 3, God
commands our love by telling us to “put on a heart of compassion, kindness,
gentleness, bearing with one another, forgiving each other." This is
sandwiched in between glorious proclamations of God's love "so as those
who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved," and "just as God in
Christ has forgiven you." It is the work which God has done which
makes our desires change. Really isn't that what the Gospel is anyways?

The gospel is declaration
of the good news of what God has already done. It is not about us. It is about
God. It is about how amazingly good God is and how we desperately need Him. So
why stop trusting in God's goodness at the point of salvation and cling to our
own pitiful self-righteous or self efforts? It is so wonderful that God actually
tells us to love Him. Yet He doesn't do it without showing us His love for us
first. Jesus is God's best picture of love. "For God so loved the world,
that he gave His only Son" (John 3:16).

When we are down, when we
are overwhelmed by life's circumstances, looking towards Jesus and God's
amazing demonstration of His love should be more than enough to bring us up out
of the pit of despair. God sent Jesus to live amongst us (His enemies), who
killed, mocked, and rejected Him. This amazing love was willing to suffer
all this from His creatures, as well as suffer the wrath of God the Father as
he paid for our sins in His body on the cross (I Pet. 2:25) . If we truly wrestled
with this truth and weren't so self-absorbed, or so consumed with our own pain,
we would never doubt His love again. No, we would never love anything more than
Him, even for a moment. We would never need to try harder to love the One who
has loved us that much. In fact, we could count it a great privilege to love
others with that kind of self-sacrificing love since we are so filled with Christ's.
Let's rejoice in His love.

I'd love to see what
other passages you find which declare God's motivational love.

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Welcome to Two by Two Art Studio. I provide art decor& instruction for God's glory. Please enjoy browsing often as I plan to offer more inspirational pieces for your home and tutorials on how to create artwork yourself & with your kids.